The Striker's Forbidden Love

Chapter Thirteen - Questions With Teeth

The headlights held steady behind her for one long, terrifying second before the car eased forward and pulled into the space two rows over. A door opened. A tired-looking man in a delivery uniform climbed out, phone in hand, clearly checking an address instead of stalking anyone.

Mia let out a breath so sharp it hurt her chest.

"Sorry... sorry, I'm here, I just…." she said into the phone, laughing shakily at herself. "I thought someone was following me. It's a pizza delivery guy who's lost."

"You okay?" Daniel's voice came through immediately, sharper now, all the softness from a moment ago gone tight with concern.

"I'm fine. Just jumpy." Mia said, pressing a hand to her chest like she could physically slow her own heartbeat. "This week has turned me into someone who assumes every stranger's out to get her."

"That's not an unreasonable assumption right now." Daniel said, quiet. "I don't love that you're sitting alone in a parking lot at eleven at night, Torres."

"I'm literally in my car with the doors locked. I'll be home in ten minutes." Mia said, though something in her chest warmed at the concern anyway. "Go to sleep. You've got film to review before Wednesday, probably."

"Probably." Daniel admitted. "Text me when you're home."

"Bossy." Mia said, smiling despite the leftover adrenaline still humming under her skin.

"It's literally my job." Daniel said, and she could hear the small, tired smile in it even through the phone.

She drove home with the radio off, replaying the sound of his voice the whole way, and texted him the moment she walked through her own front door. His reply came back in seconds just one word, “good” and somehow that was enough to let her finally sleep.

The peace didn't last past Monday morning.

Mia arrived at the training ground to find the mood entirely different from Saturday's high, quieter, tighter, the kind of atmosphere that settled over a place right before someone important got called into a room they didn't want to be in.

She found out why during the walk to the pitch. Priya caught up to her, eyes wide, voice pitched low.

"Elena called Daniel into her office first thing. Like, before anyone else even got here." Priya said. "Sonia from admin said she looked furious walking in."

Mia's stomach dropped clean through the floor. "About what?"

"Nobody knows for sure. But given everything..." Priya trailed off, letting the implication sit there between them, not unkind, just honest.

Mia spent the entire warmup only half present, eyes drifting toward the administrative building every few minutes, willing Daniel to appear and give her some sign of how bad this actually was. He didn't. Practice started without him, an assistant coach running drills in his place, offering no explanation beyond a tight, uncomfortable smile that told Mia everything and nothing at once.

He finally emerged forty minutes in, jaw set, shoulders rigid in a way she'd never seen from him not even during the worst of the burner-account chaos. He took over the session without a word of explanation, voice clipped, corrections sharper than usual, the whole practice running through him like static electricity looking for somewhere to discharge.

Mia caught him alone at the water break, heart hammering.

"What happened?" She asked, low, urgent.

"Not here." Daniel said, barely moving his lips, eyes scanning the pitch for anyone close enough to overhear.

"Daniel."

"Not here, Torres." He said again, firmer this time, and something in his tone made her back off immediately, fear coiling tighter in her chest with every passing second of practice.

She got her answer after the session ended, cornering him near the equipment shed while the rest of the team filtered toward the locker room.

"Elena brought me in about the forum post."

Daniel said, voice low, controlled in the specific way that meant he was working very hard to stay that way. "Someone on the club board saw it over the weekend. Forwarded it to her directly, along with a few pointed questions about whether there's any truth to it."

"What did you tell her?" Mia asked, throat tight.

"That it's baseless speculation. That I treat every player on this roster with the same professional standard." Daniel said, and something in the flatness of his delivery told Mia exactly how much that lie had cost him to say out loud. "She wanted to believe me. I don't think she fully did."

"Is she going to do anything?"

"Not yet. She's watching. Which is somehow worse than her simply confronting us outright." Daniel said, dragging a hand through his hair, the gesture more unguarded than she'd ever seen from him. "If one more thing surfaces, one more photo, one more forum post, one more anything I don't think 'baseless speculation' is going to cut it anymore."

Mia felt the ground shift under the whole season, every bit of ground they'd fought to hold suddenly feeling thinner than paper.

"So what do we do?" She asked, the question she seemed to keep asking him lately, the one that never had a satisfying answer.

"We give her nothing else to question." Daniel said. "Real distance this time. Not the version we tried before. The actual thing."

Mia nodded, throat too tight to answer properly, hating how much the words cost her even as she recognized they were probably the only smart move left.

Daniel's phone buzzed in his pocket before either of them could say anything else. He glanced at it, and whatever color remained in his face drained away entirely.

"What?" Mia asked, already bracing herself.

He turned the screen toward her without a word.

It was an email. Club letterhead. Subject line in bold, impossible to miss even from three feet away.

RE: Conduct Inquiry — Scheduled Review, Thursday 9 AM.